Semi-Finalist Week #10

My dh is military and will hit his 12 year mark in October and will also be promoted to E-7 the same month-Yeah!! Besides the constant moving, uprooting of kids and schools is always hard on everyone. Even with deployments and him going to schools for long periods of time is no fun either. But I think the hardest deployment for me was in 2003 for the start of the war. He flew our on Valentine's Day, and because everything was hush hush then we found out two days before when his ship date was. All we could do is drop him off on base and leave. At that time, we had one son, Peytan who was 2 1/2. I didn't get anything from him no letter or phone call nothing because of what they were preparing for over there. Peytan had issues with constipation since he was a couple weeks old. I finally got a consult with a specialist in Chapel Hill which was 3 hours away. We drove up on the Eve of the start of the war and stayed at the Ronald McDonald House. As he slept I watched the countdown to the war on TV. I still hadn't heard from him. At the appointment the next day he had to be knocked out for his MRI which was the hardest thing to watch. They let me sit in the room with him as they did the MRI and all I could do was cry. When it was finally over and he was awake enough for us to go home. I drove home in a down pour! Not sure if my day could get any better! LOL!! About a week later I get a phone call from a nurse saying that he had Spinalbifida Occulta. I was speechless. She was so monotone as she told me and then proceeded to say that 15% of the population had it and didn't know it. Yep, that helped! I called one of our good friends that was station with us and that went to school with us (we were high school sweathearts, rival schools) he came over with dinner for us and his oldest to play with Peytan. I decided to send a Red Cross message to Jason to let him know what was going on because I didn't want him to hear it from someone else. Some of the guys that stayed in Kuwait did have access to phones, and word travels fast. It took me a week to convince his Sgt.Major to send it. I finally get a call via satellite phone to give him the break down of what was going on. And that he can go back with me when they do the second MRI on his head, because I couldn't do that again by myself. I think our conversation lasted 3 minutes. As the months passed I got letters from him, of course I sent letters and boxes as well. He finally got to call when they were back in Kuwait after the "invasion" part was over. He came home two weeks later just in time for the fourth of July! Nine months later we had Christian!

Peytan is now 8 and doing great! He'll probably be on Miralax the rest of his life and still has problems now and then. His favorite thing to do is play his PS3 online with Jason! I attached a pic of my boys as well!
BTW- after he was back a couple months, they tried to charge him money for that satellite phone call!
TIA
Amy-- Happy Scrapping! Semper Fi!